Nyx Falling
by KhamanV
Summary: Keres is a new Warlock lost in the old City, desperate to find her own way to her destiny. Captivated to a dangerous, mad extent by legends about ancient Thanatonauts, she is searching through the realm of death to find answers for why she's alive. She may not be ready for them. (This story deals frankly with death and suicide, please heed the note at the story's beginning.)
1. The First Card - Voyager

_(This story will include frank discussions of suicide, suicide methods (without visual violence), and suicidal ideation as it relates to the Destiny universe and their Thanatonauts. Guardians may, in most cases, be regenerated back into life. We do not get this option; we get one spin on the wheel only. If you are not in a good place, please reconsider reading this story. If that is why you were drawn to this story, please PM me, I'm always checking my email and I will be happy to talk to you and get you help. The US suicide hotline is 1 (800) 273-8255 )_

_Nyx Falling_

This fire burns our brains so fiercely, we wish to plunge  
>To the abyss' depths, Heaven or Hell, does it matter?<br>To the depths of the Unknown to find something new!

~Baudelaire, The Voyage, from La Fleur du Mal

. . .

The First Card – Voyager

. . .

_"You must not forget how to live," _whispers my Ghost into my ear, our familiar refrain and ancient _logos_. A reason for the universe. My reason.

I don't respond to it, not aloud anyway. I focus on the deep dive ahead of me instead. The Towers and the Traveler and the sprawling last City are at my back. Beneath my feet are the steel girders of the Twilight Gap. And before me is only empty air.

I am tired of using bullets. Sometimes I imagine I remember the sharp spang of impact, a ricochet of metal against bone, before I begin to grasp about in the darkness for vision. I've wondered many nights if that interferes with my search, that connection to base mortality when what I need is the _immortal. _So I've looked for other methods instead, methods where I can more easily focus on the mind's journey and not the body. Today is the first for this one.

I don't know how the others did it in the early ages of the Warlocks. So much of it is lost and even our oldest scholars can recall so little of those related secrets, those rituals of preparation for the dark journey. Or perhaps they do not share. The rumor is that our representative, Ikora Rey, disapproves of the thanatonaut trials, but who can know? I dare not ask her myself. Nor do I want to reach out to the handful of others that I know try to navigate this path. Not yet.

A gust of bitterly cold, crisp wind rushes by me and instinct causes me to grasp at the scaffolding at my side. I see my own young skin, the back of my hand; soft blue and lit gently from within. I am Awoken. I don't think that means I'm awake. I think I'm far from that. My life feels like it's been trapped inside a numb, confusing fog since my Ghost woke me. Death becomes meaningless to the Guardians, and I feel too often as if that means life is, too.

But that can't be true, because if it is, then our fight is also meaningless. There are too many riddles and not a single answer. If I can't find one when I'm alive, maybe there are clues somewhere in the other state.

The flesh that binds me wants to live, it craves and claws for rescue while I pen it up on this high perch once meant for birds alone. My heart is thumping hard inside my chest. My mind believes I need _more _to understand the soul. That beyond the twin valleys of fear and death is understanding. I don't know if what I subject myself to is brave. I only believe it is necessary. Why else were we given these gifts of revival, if not to use them as we seek?

"Fly with me," I whisper to my close Ghost, and I fall in defiance of my primal need to survive.

. . .

_First there is darkness – only the cold and simple darkness that is the forever shadow behind the light of life, and the first flash of a possible understanding distracts me. If Light might be Life incarnate, then is not the darkness of death itself forever the Other?_

_The fear slithers out of the dark to grip me when I realize this and I cannot breathe._

_I cannot breathe and I am terrified. My heart would crash through my chest but it doesn't beat and my body is still broken on the ground below the wall. Death will not permit me air to calm myself. Death is the final God. No gleaming sphere for its incarnation but only infinity itself. This is its realm and I am a trespasser stealing secrets from its altar._

_And yet I see. What I see – is it only darkness, or Darkness?_

_I try to scream and there is no sound._

_There are shapes now, writhing in the black. They are things made of knotted flesh and grinding metal and sometimes both at once. There is a low and starving growl that may be only my mind knitting itself together under the careful guidance of my Ghost, but I think it may also be death's own Guardian, a minotaur come to hunt the intruder in the maze. I think I see it, towering over me and its profile lit with a monstrous, flickering hue of purple. But perhaps now that is only a memory of Mars or maybe even Venus snapping around in my cortex. Worlds where I have ranged in life._

_It screams at me as my flesh snaps together anew and in its howls I hear the black hymn of the Garden. It's close. It's so close. I can smell the flowers and they are sharp and full of strange perfume._

_I forget the thing hunting me and press forward in the vision to try and reach it; the place beyond. Others have broken it open to be searched and studied there in the reality of Meridian Bay, but it still also exists untouched in the countless layers that make up the tower of space-time. In one of them must be a secret still guarded. I mean to find it and tear it back with me into the Light of day._

_A single light blooms before me in the distance and it is red like blood, like the edges of a flame. It bursts into an inferno to consume me and now I know it's only the blood rushing again through my ears and_

_. . ._

I sit up, reaching for my own face to see if I'm still who I think I am. My hand trembles from new muscle fatigue and that old, unavoidable fear. "How long down?" I croak, my throat painfully dry.

_"Thirty seconds."_

"Not long enough." I shake my head at my Ghost, feeling pain behind my fresh eyes as the morning light lances sharp into them. "I need more."

It sounds reluctant. _"You found the path to the Garden again."_

"It's guarded, Ghost. So well guarded." I manage a laugh for it, but it hovers close, its one eye staring at me without that soft-lit amusement I liked better. I know it wants me down shorter times, not liking the increased risk that comes with longer deaths. It must be hard for the construct and I feel a moment's guilt. I know it doesn't approve of my journeys at all, but it will abide. As will I. "The minotaur is always watching. If the others still experimenting have gotten this close, I wish them good luck, too."

_"Pujari walked the maze and it destroyed him. The keepers of the black garden do not tolerate visitors. The visions you are chasing may destroy you, too."_

"Eventually."

_"I can break the encryptions on the inner archive. Let me steal you old books. You can ponder those for a while and see what guidance you can find. There are new texts being uploaded from the reclaimed Ishtar Collective, even. Maybe somewhere in there is a clue to the old rituals, the ones set down by ancient Osiris. Heal for a time. Rest. Prepare for the next journey." _Its thin, musical voice pleads with me. It's hard to resist it, it asks so little of me these days. Having already asked everything when it brought me to life the first time.

I still feel driven by the fading vision, however. I want to try to explain what I see. "I saw a light bloom this time, and it was red."

_"Yes. Pujari spoke-"_

"I don't care about Pujari!" I snap in frustration, unable to help myself. I'm losing the trail, too busy realizing how much my body aches. "I need to see with my own eyes."

_"When you are in the darkness, Keres, whose eyes are you seeing with?"_

I didn't have an answer for that.

. . .

I let the Ghost win for a while, going about patrols and losing myself in studies. My companions brightened to see me like that, and it was tempting to stay and bask in their shared Light. From time to time Ghost brought me the new texts, as promised, and in them was almost nothing I could use. The Collective were scientists; their need for philosophy was slim and their interest in death almost entirely biological.

Yet I read them all in grim fascination well into the long nights, wondering what the Vex saw when they looked out of their cage at their human keepers. _If_ they were caged – the Ghost brought me transcripts of Ishtar's scientists driven to grim questions of reality itself. A possible basilisk's trap, meant to punish the living into serving the Vex's ultimate ends. But the Warmind gambit certainly worked. Didn't it?

In the end, who knew? The transcripts ended in mystery, like so much we've tried to recover.

At night after finishing those texts, unable to sleep, I began to wonder if I was being watched by Vex at every second. That we were in fact still all in that cage, with only a little food and a treadmill to run on. Or that there were no others – only _me_ in that cage and under study by that collective alien mind. A solipsistic hellscape.

I don't dream any more, not since I started hunting death and its visions instead. I'm thankful for that now. I think after these texts I might have woken up screaming, terrified that my eyes would fly open and stare into those single red ones.

I tried to distract myself with a tangent. There was that grinding metal in the darkness of death, I remembered. The Vex are not bound by time and space, so why should they be fixed in place by a mortal's concepts of life and death? Were they indeed _there _too? Was my vision of the minotaur in the maze far closer to the truth than I realized?

Perhaps they were the ones who held the keys to what I needed.

Ghost, I think I'm going mad. But if I want to be sane, I need to keep searching.

. . .

Ikora Rey came to visit me, her eyes watching me close while her voice was firm and kindly. "Guardian Keres, you've been quite busy in our library lately. It's always good to see new Warlocks so invested in helping us try to piece together our past."

I lick my lips, looking for any traps in her words. So far, there were only those I might trip myself into. "I know so little that the books we have are amazing to me. I barely even remember what came before. The library helps with that. I find myself not feeling so adrift." I glance at my Ghost, telling mostly the truth. I think I might have born on a ship near the Reef. Or on Earth, in the shadow of a pile of half-melted rubble. Or perhaps they are both just echoes of my resurrections. Those are the possibilities that blend together the strongest, at least.

There are whispers of other things somewhere in the mist. I can't tell for certain which ones have any truth. Ghost worries that the journeys I'm taking are causing other memories to fragment, that the constant deaths are rewriting and tearing apart everything else I have.

I'm afraid it might be right.

I can't let that stop me. I _need_ to keep searching.

Ikora smiles for me. "The past is always a whisper in our ears, and it's one that shouldn't be forgotten in the sea of living noise. What we need also, however, is future's song."

"But the two in are locked in a cycle, one needing the other. Two harmonies to teach their lessons, so we don't forget our mistakes." I give her a slight bow, afraid that I'm about to sweat through my tunic and wishing I'd kept my armored robe on to hide my shaking. In the kind voice of the Vanguard is a warning.

"Very good. The balance must be kept, however. Don't lose yourself chasing that whisper," she says, and now I _know _she doesn't need to waste time laying a trap to catch me out. She already sees what I've been up to and thinks to save me from myself.

"Ma'am," I say, not acknowledging what I know she knows. I sound apologetic, because I am. I should not have been caught, but I am young, and I must learn from my error.

Ikora clasps her umber-brown hands in front of her long robe, and I still feel her eyes studying me. "I need to send some representatives on a small mission. The Cabal are attempting a push on Deimos and the debris belt around Mars. Some speculation suggests they may even press further than that if we don't halt them quickly. Perhaps they're bored and lonely with all the attention we've given to the Moon lately." She sounds dryly amused, making a little _hmph _in the back of her throat before continuing.

"They've already meddled far too much with Phobos for our comfort and now they're looking to expand. I'll be sending you, for one. I've seen your patrol logs; I think you could use a little air that isn't Russian." I hear the smile spread in her voice. "The Titans will be on point command, you'll defer to them on this one."

"Of course, Ma'am." I straighten, considering this change of plans. "Who will I report to when I depart?"

"Exo Striker Vance-17. Do you know him?"

The Guardian with a human's shadow following alongside his Ghost's. A stoic. "I know of him. I will be happy to help." I look up to see the smile still on her face.

"You won't need too much formality with him, Keres. Relax. Have a little fun with your work for the City's protection."

I ignore the way she stresses a Guardian's true priorities. Yes. My work. Where the Cabal go, death always follows close behind. I smile as I realize this, delighted. The delight is genuine and I think it takes her off guard. "I look forward to it!"


	2. The Second Card - Warrior

The Second Card: Warrior

. . .

"You must not forget how to die," I whisper to myself as the Cabal siege begins to finally crack through the side hatch. The lines of thick solder that seals it begin to glow and melt despite the team's best efforts to shore it up. Beside me, towering over me, is a Titan limned and ready in the arcing fire of his element.

In the fury of battle I have little time to contemplate the shadows. They haunt, regardless. Death is down every corridor, filling my nostrils with its dark, rotting stench so thoroughly that I have to admit to myself that I'm addled and afraid. Primal response. It's unavoidable. I can hear the bodies of the Cabal whispering to me as I pass them, and I don't understand what they say. We've stolen their dropship and their lives, and if the blocky, intimidating dreadnaught currently orbiting Deimos pulls towards in our direction as planned, we'll steal everything of _that_, too.

I doubt what they have to say is kindly. We're thieves, and for them in their Darkness we must have no mercy. They would give us none in return.

My Ghost adds nothing, has no guidance to offer here. There is only the Titan's murmured commands into his lowered helm, and he takes no foolishness from any of us. "First dropship verified crew terminated. Second is attempting entry through prior breach. We are in position midship ready to rout. Roger me, Bravo. Gamma, move aft. Delta, Epsi, take the fore. Expect multiple breaches. No armor-pierce rounds. They can suck vacuum, not us."

_"Bravo team, roger roger."_

"You got access?" His metallic voice rumbles like old diesel engines.

_"Eyes on the port, Vance. We are in position, waiting for some noise."_

"Happy hunting." Vance-17 shut his open comm with a swift snap of his blued-steel head. I watch his Ghost zoom forward to re-assess our time to engage with whatever is on the other side of the weakened hatch. "Me and Keres frontline; Wraith, you got the rear guard. People in the middle, shoot the thumbheads, not each other. Ain't training day, kids. Ghost, mark."

His Ghost whips back towards our now-hunkered position, its thrumming little voice dryly amused by, I could only imagine, just another day with its Guardian. _"We don't have any time left for tea, sorry to say. Breach ETA thirty seconds counting down... now."_

The scout rifle is firm in my gloved hands, the blessing of plas and steel armor grips. Inside, my fingers are already pruning from sweat. A thousand deaths, and for all my preparations and philosophy, I'm never quite as ready for another in war as I think.

Chaos reigns in a fight. There are no easy paths in that form of death. Only fear. I thought I might contemplate the mystery here, but I am distracted by the needs of my team and my own ever-present mortal worries. Enough. There's lessons to find in chaos, if I can just keep my center and look for them. Sometimes there is value to staying _alive_.

The door begins its bulging. I inhale once, low and slow, trying to find that center. A firm place in the world.

I know how to die. It's remembering how to _kill _that gives me pause now and again. Because I know what flickers behind a living thing's eyes when they go down. It's not always a gift, but for a Guardian, it's sometimes the only one we can give.

The door snaps, the gap belching blue and white fire and the Cabal roar through shrouded in it.

Sweet holy Traveler, there are so _many_ of them.

. . .

I have only the void to give and it screams out of me. Or it is only the rasp of my voice, I can't tell anymore. My attacker staggers away from me, falling into black-burnt pieces and ash. I have to pace myself; I won't have another grenade for several more seconds and my ammunition is running dry.

They brought Centurions this time. The Psion mutations are in the back of the fray, rippling the decks with the force of whatever hellishness rattles around in their changed brains and they are not stopping. They'll burn themselves out, fry their minds before they stop trying to destroy us. A piece of me has to respect the dedication even as I dodge and skip back from a ripple of arc-white energy intended to shatter my legs.

As the Centurions move toward us inside their weaponized shields, the air is set on fire. I watch a Guardian falter and then fall to his knees, scrabbling away for any air hiding underneath the sharp smell of burning ozone.

"Get to cover," I hear Vance snap at the downed man, a human Hunter. "Don't make me carry your load while you get your lungs stitched back together."

"I'm okay," mumbles the Guardian, woozy. I don't know him. I think he's new. But for the team lead and his rear guard, most of us are new. Trials by fire.

"Don't backtalk me. Just get down and chuck your damn knives till you get your feet under you." Vance elbows a Legionnaire so hard in its face that the alien's neck snaps, malformed into the sharp angle of the unmistakeably dead. The Exo looks unamused by its charge. Then those gold eyes fix on _me_. My breath catches, but he only throws an ammo pack in my direction. I don't fumble it, at least. "Don't slow down, 'lock. Third wave incoming."

"Yes, sir," I manage. In watching him fight I understand now why I've heard of the Titan, if in passing. War is his trade, and unlike me thus far, he's given himself a hard purpose behind it. He knows _why_ he fights. There are no doubts in his metal mind. I don't understand the import of the unique and oddly pretty mark at his waist, but my understanding isn't necessary. It drives him. That's enough.

I almost feel bad for the Cabal he's cutting through.

"_Sir,_" he snorts, derisive. His Ghost gives me a long, blue-eyed look. It reminds me of Ikora's careful speculation. My own still adds nothing, save predictive data and updates to my armor integrity. I haven't died yet today, I realize. I don't know what that means, but I do understand it's useful to the team. My own needs, my own search, it _has _to run secondary to what must be done for us to succeed. I'm not so far lost in the seductions of the black garden that I can't realize that. "Fall back to the cover line. I bet they lead with Phalanx this time. They're tryin' to wear us down."

"Options?"

"We don't wear down," he says, slamming a fresh clip into his own rifle.

. . .

So we don't. Someone's got a weapon that doesn't give a damn for the Cabal's massive shields, its bullets flickering on impact with unsettling green fire. I think it's Vance's companion, Wraith, and he is unstoppable whether or not the weapon is in his hand. We rout the Cabal's attempt to retake this first dropship and press them back into the new one, carving them apart as we go. The other teams have since melted through their resistance. The second dropship is ours within another hour. Our cycle of death and rebirth is slim and I come through unscathed except for a ringing in my ears and a set of thick, burning scars along my side that will leave when I finally crawl through death's chambers again. None of theirs rise again. We are the things they are afraid of in the dark, I think.

Like many mysteries, I don't know what that might mean.

We have won this part of the battle, but their commander still waits in the heart of the nearby dreadnaught. The Ghosts identify him by comm trace as an Amerel-rank, deep-space Colossus – Ameral Vec'thaur. An admiral of the black ocean. This does not impress our op commander in the slightest. As the new Guardians across the handful of fireteams celebrate our dual victory, Vance-17 is more interested in certain readouts in the main control room of the dropship.

He snaps his fingers at me when he catches me staring, gesturing for me to come alongside. "'Kay, schoolgirl. Snap quiz. What's that reading tell you?" He jabs a thick metal finger at an arcing trajectory that begins at the 'naught and slings towards us. I realize its import instantly. "The dreadnaught's sending another assault through one of their small warships. They're done playing." I calculate from the intel as fast as I can; certainly not as quick as his Ghost might and surely has. "We've got maybe ten minutes before it's in range." I look up at him, horrified by the implication. "Those are armed for space combat. Mass drivers under the belly. They don't miss."

"Yeah, it's gonna blow us up before we break open the champagne. Welp. That's a day at work, 'lock."

The Exo approach to impending death is clearly an offhanded one. I clear my throat. "What's the plan, sir?"

"First, stop calling me sir." A second thick finger joins the first. "Second, stop calling me sir."

I'm almost afraid to ask. "...Third?"

"Cabal got egos like I got bullets." He examines my blank expression before the gold-diode eyes roll up to the ceiling of the control room. I flush. I'm not good with his analogies. "It's a lot of ego, kid. Bearing that in mind, who d'ya think's gonna push the big shiny button that launches the attack?"

My scalp prickles under my tight black helm as I get his meaning. "Vec'thaur is on that warship."

"I've never torn the head off one of their command ultras before," he says, his tone musing. "Ikora says you got a flair for doing stupid, usually fatal shit. Get Alpha team together for me, say its on my word. Haul them down to C deck, get your gear into enviro-control mode, then prepare yourselves for doing stupid shit."

C deck is the lowest accessible floor of the dropship, home of several small hangars and cargo bays. It's also where the grav generators are. I think quickly, trying to imagine what we're about to get up to.

Oh, yes. That's a completely ridiculous plan. I have to smile.

We're going to use artificial nav to slingshot a fireteam through open space towards a warship so that we can see if an Exo Guardian can physically rip an enormous Cabal warrior's head clean off.

I've got twenty glimmer that says he can.


End file.
